One Brief Shining Moment
by Ellarose C
Summary: It's in the back room of a hardware store in Chelsea that Alfred finds the glimpse of humanity he's been longing for since forever. UK/US.


{A/N: This is actually my first attempt/completion of UK/US porn, so watch out. It might suck.

Written for the awesome Marissa/saudadee on tumblr with the prompt 'America taking pictures of England'. It morphed into an odd tribute to my visual design class and street art.}

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One Brief Shining Moment

It's in the back room of a hardware store in Chelsea (after seven straight hours of editing video on his laptop while watching his movie's subject paint on the floor in front of him) that Alfred finds the glimpse of humanity he's been longing for since forever.

It's one of the early nights, one where he was still a strange American who forced his camera and his questions and himself on the introverted street artist. Back then, he still called him Camelot sometimes, like the majority of London – or at least, those who paid attention to the evershifting graffiti on the sides of bridges or along a fence. Back then, Arthur didn't trust him, so he staved off the big, story-spanning projects of his infamy, preferring to wander the city with black and green, tagging bareboned walls washed clean by the rain and the municipal street cleaners with Celtic runes and medieval legends, forgetting they were his as he turned away.

The still that changed the world, in Alfred's eyes, is in a fifteen-second clip in the corner of an Underground tunnel, dimly lit with the claws of a black dragon on the wall behind Arthur's profile. His chin is uplifted to smile into lime green eyes of the dragon; his eyes are soft as a parent's; his ear piercings catch the fluorescents and flash white under scraggly, dirty blonde hair and a worn, dark plaid cap. Alfred stares at the screen, entranced and entirely unable to articulate why.

Arthur looks up from his copy of an eighteenth century rural landscape, scowling slightly at Alfred, who sits frozen on the folding chair at the edge of his cheap burlap canvas that is cut and stitched in the shape of the floor space left after the shelves and the boxes. "What's got your eye, boy?"

Alfred doesn't jerk out of his trance and laugh as Arthur anticipates. He just smiles and gestures for Arthur to come look.

With a world-weary sigh and a drag of a paint-covered hand through his hair, Arthur draws himself up from his sprawl on the floor slowly, stretching stiff leg and shoulder muscles and moving behind Alfred's shoulder to look over it.

There is a long pause, through which Alfred smiles in wonder and Arthur scowls in confusion. "What about it?"

Alfred gasps in mock shock, zooming in on the frame so it takes up the whole window, moving it around and settling on Arthur's face. "Can't you see it?"

"See what?"

Alfred finally wrenches his eyes from the image of Arthur to smile at the real thing.

"You're gorgeous, Arthur."

Arthur steps back from where he was hovering over Alfred's shoulder, straightening his clothes and blushing furiously. "Shut your rot," he grumbles, stepping around Alfred to get back to his painting.

Before he gets too far, though, Alfred sets his computer to the side and pulls him back with an arm around his waist, spinning him around so Arthur is straddling his lap. Arthur's arms fall around his shoulders as Alfred leans forward to brush his mouth over Arthur's neck back into his hair. "Mmm, not gonna," he whispers directly into Arthur's ear, smiling. Arthur smirks.

He sits back against the circle of Alfred's arms and shoves his paint wet hands through golden hair, staining it blue and gray and brown, gliding down to hold his face in his hands. Alfred just grins, dilated eyes and broad shoulders under him. "You're one to talk, love," he says, bending down to press an open mouth against that smile. Alfred opens up to him, sighing against him and weaving his arms together at the small of Arthur's back. His breath is hot and warm against his tongue, and Arthur tangles multicolored fingers in his hair and holds him closer. One of Alfred's hands works up the back of his shirt while the other inches down into his pants, pressing in circles as he explores Arthur's skin. Arthur hums into his mouth and locks his ankles around the back legs of the chair, forcing himself forward all along Alfred's front, chest to groin, tilting Alfred's head to follow, unable to pull away from his mouth. Alfred sucks in a breath and Arthur's tongue in the process, wandering hand pushing Arthur's shirt and jacket halfway up his hest to bunch over his ribs.

Carefully, controlled, Alfred shifts forward slowly, giving Arthur time to unlatch from the chair, and lays them down across Arthur's unfinished painting at his feet. Arthur's breath leaves him and he laughs, melting into Alfred's arms even as he feels the slightly wet paint stick to his exposed back. Alfred grins down at him, as sunny as London is gray, then dips down to kiss him again. Arthur locks a leg behind Alfred's knee, the other around his hips, thrusting once but purposefully against Alfred's jeans. Alfred curses into his mouth and breaks away to tuck his head in Arthur's shoulder. He gets the point.

He shifts back to a kneel, pulling off his shirt and throwing it to the side as Arthur shrugs out of his jacket and shirt, writhing around on the floor and making his legs fall to the side away from Alfred. There will be a giant smudge in his cloudy sky now, he knows. He doesn't care.

He might just keep it there.

When they're both topless, Alfred falls back forward, catching himself just before driving the wind from Arthur's lungs. He smirks smugly at the artist beneath him, but Arthur just rolls his eyes and grabs his hair again to kiss it away.

They rock clothed hips together, taking their time because they can. There's no rush on this; all the other employees are gone for the night, and it's raining too much to go out on the town. Alfred's abroad faculty leader, Kiku, is too used to his disappearing at night by now to be overly concerned.

Slowly, they peel away the bottom layers of each other, sighing and smearing gray and blue across the rough canvas. When Arthur's hands migrate to Alfred's ass, he pulls away with a gasp and a grin, tumbling back towards his computer and camera bag by the chair. He learned to always carry lube and a box of condoms with him soon after he and Arthur first fell into bed together (figuratively speaking, of course; it was really a cramped standing space under an overpass on the edge of the city after a rooftop chase from the police, hyped on adrenaline and tension). He comes back to Arthur, a sunny day in his smile, and Arthur swallows and flips them over, from dark clouds to stony hills, taking Alfred's hands and stealing their contents. He wastes no time in popping open the lid of the bottle, twisting his fingers together in the gel as Alfred lets his legs fall to the side, telling himself his face is only hot from exertion.

Arthur leans forward as he presses a finger in, murmuring nonsense in Celtic or Gaelic or maybe Old English. (He knows it's nonsense because it's not the first time he's done this, and he asked, Arthur fidgeting behind his red cheeks and quick to assert that he actually can speak whatever language it is, but these are just the words he _likes_.)

He adds another finger too soon, and Alfred hisses, biting on whatever's closest to his mouth, which happens to be Arthur's neck. He winces, and Alfred raises his hands from exploring Arthur's skin to cup his neck as tender as he can, rubbing his thumbs along his jaw slowly; they kiss frantically, hips bumping and the concrete floor with the scratchy texture unforgiving on Alfred's back. He barely notices the third finger, caught up in kissing his artist, cigarette smoke and fire and salt, fingers in his hair, on his face, toying with the piercings on his left ear, sticking the tip of his tongue through the small gauge there, flicking the barbell in his eyebrow. With each metal movement Arthur shivers; his free hand pulls at Alfred's cock just when his distracted stretching finally hits his prostate, and Alfred cries out, head thrashing to the side. He gets the point.

He tries to open and roll on the condom one-handed (because he likes the kid, he's not going to subject him to the spotty sexual history of a deviant), but he fumbles and fails and Alfred _laughs_ at him.

"Need a hand, old man?" he jokes, gliding his hands down Arthur's body to the trouble area. Arthur huffs, breath chill against his shoulder, and lets Alfred take over, lets him slide a hand down Arthur's cock to push the condom on firmly, squeezing lube directly onto it and leaving the bottle open and leaking where it lands to the side. He slicks it on while he plays with the rings in Arthur's cartilage with lips and tongue and teeth, and Arthur can't stop his mouth from falling open and his hips from bucking into that wide hand.

Alfred pulls a leg back to hook a knee over Arthur's shoulder, where it quickly falls down to the crook of his elbow. He laughs and tugs Arthur's hips forward.

With a deep breath, Arthur moves the other hand behind Alfred's other knee, prying him wide and sliding in with a long sigh.

The now-familiar burn settles in Alfred gradually, unfazed by the pace Arthur begins instantly, even as Alfred bucks into it to match. He slides around on the painting, wet brown and gray reducing the natural friction and making him slip around just a fraction as Arthur fucks him into the painting.

"Are you still- gonna put this up?" Alfred gasps after a few minutes, ending in a wail as Arthur pegs his prostate again. He grins into Alfred's neck where he had been busy trying to lick and kiss the skin away.

"You must be joking, love," he replies, voice rasping as Alfred clenches around him. "This is my new favorite." Alfred laughs shakily, then loses himself in the sex and forgets the question.

When they finish, Arthur curling over Alfred and grunting his release while Alfred completely loses all oxygen in a yell, they mold together, putting off redressing and ignoring the cold of the air and the concrete. The tied off condom is thrown into a cardboard box of wood scraps and sawdust shavings, and Arthur tucks into Alfred's broad side with closed eyes and a sated smile. Alfred rubs his cheek on the top of Arthur's hair, staring at the ceiling and thinking.

"I don't think I can blur out your face on this one," he says quietly, suddenly. Arthur's eyes pop open, but he doesn't move as Alfred continues, "I know you like your privacy, and you know I'm cool with that, Arthur, but, for just this one…" He sighs and holds him closer. "It'd be like throwing dynamite at the Sistine, or burning the Louvre."

Arthur pushes himself up enough to look into Alfred's eyes, searching. "Well, send me to Heaven," he says with a small laugh, grazing two fingers down his cheek. "You've turned into an artist."

Alfred smiles. "I guess you're right."

In the end, he cuts the scene from his project completely.


End file.
